Chapter 204: Chapter 168: Jin Xueli Teams Up with Han Liuyue
Jin Xueli drifted in that murky half-world between sleep and waking, dimly aware that she was lying in her own bed, the bedroom dark around her.
Every time she came back from the Nest, she slept like the dead.
It wasn’t just the sleep debt she’d racked up in there. It was the kind of exhaustion that ordinary people had no frame of reference for — how to even describe it?
Like dying, and then having your soul wander the earth without rest for a hundred years — crossing mountains, fording rivers — only to be resurrected in a body that remembered every single one of those years.
Her body seemed to know, on some instinctual level, that a trip to the Nest wasn’t a normal human experience. Like deep-sea diving — technically possible, but not what the human body was built for. To fight off the Nest’s lingering effects, the brain demanded sleep in obscene quantities.
And on top of that, she’d gone back in with Han Liuyue before she’d even had a chance to properly recover from the last time. Before she’d climbed into bed, Jin Xueli had already resigned herself to the idea that sleeping three or four days straight wouldn’t be the least bit surprising.
How long had she been out? She wondered fuzzily.
"...A little over a day," a voice beside her answered.
Oh. That long. So today should be...
"It’s November 21st. Nine o’clock in the evening, exactly."
Should probably get up and eat something. Jin Xueli rolled over in bed and pressed her face into the silk pillow. Sleep still draped over her like a night sky with no crack of light to break through.
"Did you know? Morando, the Hunter from Blackmoor City, actually has quite a few devoted fans."
Hmph. Morando.
"There’s an Illusion channel on Reddit. It’s pretty dead since not many Hunters use it — at this point it’s basically turning into Morando’s personal fan page."
...Wait.
She was home alone. Who was talking?
Jin Xueli jolted upright so fast the last of her sleep evaporated on the spot. Her heart slammed against her ribs, every hair on her body standing on end.
But the dim bedroom held no one. Just her.
The voice had seemed to come from right beside the bed, but the bed was empty. She reached out and pressed her hand to the edge of the mattress — the sheets were cool to the touch. No one had been sitting there.
She switched on the bedroom light, did another sweep of the room, and still didn’t feel reassured. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand, turned on the flashlight, got down on her hands and knees, and checked under the bed. Fortunately, there was nothing under there but dust. No people.
If she’d come face to face with a pair of eyes under there, she genuinely wouldn’t have recovered.
Strange. Had she been dreaming?
The voice had sounded like a man’s. Vaguely familiar, too.
Dreams didn’t make sense, though. What man would be interested in Morando? Who would care whether she had fans or not... probably no one, right?
Whatever. She was awake now. Might as well eat something.
Her mind was already scrolling through delivery app menus, and she was just about to open one when she raised her phone and the screen lit up: November 21, 2026 — 9:04 PM.
Jin Xueli froze. 9:04?
The time the voice in her dream had given her matched the actual time almost exactly?
She stared at her home screen full of app icons, not sure whether to chalk it up to coincidence and move on.
She was starving — her stomach was practically on fire — but her finger slid right past Uber Eats and, as if possessed, tapped open Reddit.
This wasn’t the Nest. Strange things didn’t happen here. It was fine. She’d just been dreaming...
Jin Xueli thought about Mexican food as she typed "Illusion" into the search bar.
The first round of results was a chaotic sprawl of unrelated posts. She thought for a moment, then added "Hunter" to the search. This time, she found a tiny, barren little channel with a name that made no attempt to be subtle — "Blackmoor Hunters," plain as day. Seventeen members total. Three currently online.
Jin Xueli closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath.
It’s fine. It made sense that some Hunters might want somewhere to chat online. The numbers were so low that a normal person would never stumble across it... it didn’t have to be what the dream mentioned.
The top post had been made at 8:40 — its title read: "I ran into Sister Morando today!!!" — and despite the channel being nearly dead, it already had over twenty replies.
Jin Xueli stared at it for a long moment.
She had absolutely no idea how to process this. She didn’t dare click on it. She kept scrolling, and noticed that posts about Illusions or the Nest were sparse, and when they did come up, the language was deliberately vague — most of those threads either moved offline or just fizzled out without resolution.
The majority of posts were about Morando.
"I really love her, does anyone know which Family Faction she’s with?" — barely any responses.
"So happy — logging this for myself: two hours with Morando in the N" — one of the highest-engagement posts on the channel. N was apparently the nickname for the Nest.
"I wasn’t prepared for this. My whole orientation just... changed." — Honestly, understandable.
No — wait, don’t let the posts distract you.
Why would she dream about something she had absolutely no knowledge of in real life?
Jin Xueli stared blankly at her bed. The edge of the sheets was cold and unrumpled. Even the air in the bedroom — stale and heavy after more than a day with the windows and door shut — carried no trace of any scent that shouldn’t be there, as if it had never been disturbed.
Between the last word of that voice and the moment she’d shot upright, there simply hadn’t been enough time for anyone to leave the room. And she hadn’t heard the door.
The strangest part was this: whatever had slipped into her dream had chosen to talk about Morando’s fan page.
Why not say something useful?
She wasn’t hungry anymore.
She opened the first post — the one about the encounter, posted just twenty minutes ago.
The contents:
u/Libliplick
Ever since I got back from the N, I’ve had on-and-off ringing in my ears — like I’ve got a beehive living in my head. Today was my fourth follow-up appointment, and I ran into Sister Morando right at the front entrance!
She looked startled when I recognized her, like she couldn’t figure out why I’d know who she was. I told her she was famous, and she actually got a little flustered — SO cute omg omg omg (now I get why the residents talk like that).
I asked for a photo together, but Morando said it wasn’t a good time, which was a shame. She seemed like she was waiting for someone or something — moving kind of covertly. Ha, didn’t slip past me though! Today I’m the Hunter of Love.
First reply:
I’m so jealous, where did you see her??
OP:
I’m not sure I should say, honestly — she seemed like she was there to take care of something. She was really sweet about it though, chatted with me for a bit before saying it wasn’t a good time.
The rest of the replies didn’t seem worth reading.
Jin Xueli hesitated, then clicked on the OP’s profile and went through their post history. Nothing stood out. Then she checked their comments.
This time, she scrolled down a few times before she stopped.
In a thread about healthcare posted about six months ago, the OP had replied to another user saying that she also had a minor ongoing issue she’d been dealing with, and that she was planning to try a private hospital soon — one that was supposedly backed by Westley Group investment. Expensive, but supposedly at the cutting edge in terms of doctors, equipment, and treatment options.
Morando... the Westley Family... was there a connection?
Jin Xueli thought it over, then decided to call Chaisi.
Chaisi looked intimidating, and after actually dealing with him — he was. Still intimidating.
But he had a pragmatic streak. Mutual benefit, working together — it wasn’t impossible. And besides, he’d laid out the terms of their arrangement himself, so she was obligated to pass along anything she found. Plus, he always gave off the vibe of someone who genuinely didn’t know how to interact with people normally and had just sort of armored over it with attitude.
Kind of like an incel in a different sense of the word, though at least not quite as repulsive...
"Hello?" An unfamiliar woman’s voice picked up.
Jin Xueli’s hair practically stood on end.
Answering Chaisi’s phone without hesitation, at this hour? She would never have guessed — so he actually had it in him to build that kind of close relationship with a wom—
"Are you a friend or family member of the patient?" the unfamiliar voice cut through her thoughts.
...Patient?
"What?"
"One moment, let me check... yes, here we are. Chaisi Monroe. Are you his next of kin?"
"Ah, well..."
Jin Xueli wasn’t quite ready to accept whatever role fate had just assigned her. The word "yes" wouldn’t come out, but something else did instead: "Why, is he dead? I always knew he—"
The words "wouldn’t last long" never made it out. The woman on the other end spoke quickly and matter-of-factly: "He was brought in today after poisoning and a fall from height — the fire department transported him to our hospital, but someone has requested his transfer, so he’s just been sent out. He was brought in alone, and he hadn’t regained consciousness when he was transferred. His phone and driver’s license are still here with us. You can let him know his belongings are being kept here for him."
A jumble of thoughts crashed through Jin Xueli’s mind all at once, and she couldn’t decide which one to grab first.
So no woman would ever really — no, that wasn’t the point.
How did someone manage to get poisoned and fall from a building? Pick one cause of death, that’s plenty — no need to double up... no, that wasn’t the point either.
Which hospital?
Had the Kai Family come to collect him, or...?
Did she even need to get involved? Should she call Han Liuyue?
The thoughts stampeded through her head like a herd of bison tearing across open plains, kicking up dust — and when the cloud settled, only one question was left standing.
"The hospital he was transferred to — which one is it?" Jin Xueli asked.
The woman on the other end — doctor or nurse, she couldn’t tell — gave her the name of the private hospital backed by Westley Family investment.
Without quite realizing it, Jin Xueli was already on her feet.
She remembered: back at the cemetery that day, Chaisi had said something about Morando shooting at him.
"Has the ambulance already left? How long ago?"
The woman answered: "Just under ten minutes ago, I think. It probably hasn’t reached the receiving hospital yet."
And once he got there?
Jin Xueli felt like that answer was already pretty clear.
Chaisi couldn’t die yet.
She threw on a jacket, shoved her feet into sneakers over her pajama bottoms, grabbed the backpack she took to the Nest, and bolted out the door. While she called a car, she tried Han Liuyue.
For some reason, Kai Family members seemed to have a collective policy about not answering their phones today.
She refused to give up. She called back a second time. A third. Finally, she heard the line pick up.
"...Jin Xueli?" Han Liuyue’s voice came slowly.
"Don’t tell me you’ve been sleeping this whole time too," Jin Xueli said, then caught herself and got back on track. "Actually, forget that for now — do you know what happened to Chaisi?"
"What happened to Brother Chaisi?"
So the hospital had said he was brought in alone. The Kai Family didn’t know yet.
Which raised the question — did this mean whatever he’d been doing before the poisoning and the fall was connected to the "Dominance Game"? That he’d kept it quiet enough that he hadn’t brought any Family Faction members along for backup?
Jin Xueli left out the part about the voice in her dream and laid out everything else for Han Liuyue straight. "You should probably get people over there fast, just in case something happens to him. Oh — I mean, I’m already downstairs, but if you don’t need me there, I can just head back—"
"No, I need you there."
Han Liuyue’s voice was quiet, somehow slightly different from last time, though Jin Xueli couldn’t quite put her finger on how. Less lively, maybe. Even hearing that Chaisi had been hurt, she sounded completely composed.
"I’ll head out now too... let’s meet at the hospital." There was something in her voice that almost sounded like a smile.
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